The spirit of giving is what makes GiftsToGive special

Peggy Aulisio Editor @PeggyAulisioADV

Tuesday

Nov 28, 2017 at 3:01 AM

Just watch the video of children on the GiftsToGive Facebook page talking about the spirit of giving and you get an idea of what this organization is all about. It’s fun to watch the kids trying to pronounce the word philanthropy.

The spirit of giving is the message that Founder and CEO Jim Stevens stressed during a tour of the facility in mid-October.

“The model is to connect children to giving and service,” Stevens said.

As its brochure states, GiftsToGive is “a philanthropy factory powered by children and managed by adult volunteers.”

The organization is in its eighth year. After five years in the former Berkshire Hathaway building on Cove Street in the South End of New Bedford, it moved in 2014 to the old Titleist golf ball factory at 1 Titleist Drive in Acushnet. The new facility has 60,000 square feet, or twice the space.

Stevens, who is 68, says he “grew up in corporate America,” working for companies like Revlon and Max Factor and starting his own import/export business before retiring in his 30s. In his 50s, he decided to tackle what he saw as a huge problem that hadn’t been solved, despite good intentions from 1930s welfare programs to The War on Poverty under President Lyndon Johnson to the efforts of more recent presidents.

“I’m an original Baby Boomer, son of the Greatest Generation,” Stevens said, adding, “I’m embarrassed for my generation.”

Stevens said poverty is not just a problem of lack of education but, “The missing piece is healthy families. Half the kids living in poverty don’t graduate high school. The solution is to connect them to giving and service.”

GiftsToGIve serves a wide area from Newport, Rhode Island, to the Upper Cape. Stevens, who does not take a salary, said the organization operates at less than $250,000 a year and receives no government money or grants. Expenses have been paid by a growing number of donors, beginning with just Stevens, his brother and a friend and growing last year to 900 families.

The procedure at GiftsToGive was devised to get the most use out of donated goods.

Places like social service organizations can go online to request gift packages. Stevens showed a request from a social worker for a book and clothing pack. The pack was created with seven books, age appropriate clothes and toys that weren’t asked for but included anyway.

Orders are then fulfilled from the many donated items organized inside the vast warehouse, where volunteers clean, repair, sort, package and label the materials.

More important than the gift packs, Stevens said, are the human interaction and connections. “A thousand kids a month come here, after school and on Saturdays,” he said. Plus, there are 500 adult volunteers.

Volunteers range from people cleaning and sorting donations to a retired judge “who fixes everything that’s broken” in a workshop.

Among the toys are wooden train sets used to learn the alphabet. The train sets were donated by the manufacturer because a few letters were missing. The letters were easily fixed by volunteers who just modified them. Stevens said the wooden train sets would cost $70 to $100 on Amazon.

The focus on education is evinced by the 180,000 children’s books that were repurposed last year. “Every kid gets seven books,” Stevens said. “Most of the kids we help have no books in their house.”

Clothing makes up about half the volume, and the toys are cleaned so many times, “Every single toy looks immaculate,” Stevens said.

Stevens said 95 percent of their donations come from families and 5 percent from businesses. “Twenty-thousand pounds a week of raw donations, all delivered here.”

The donations have to be cleaned and processed. Just the size of the facility shows how important it is to employ organizational skills like taking inventory. In most cases, it’s retirees, primarily women, who take on these tasks. And they do it cheerfully.

Many events are held at the facility, which has a great view of the Acushnet River. On the horizon for next year is the rehab of the old Titleist kitchen, where volunteers will serve food and teach nutrition.

About 10 percent of the donations are for adults. Stevens said they used to be given to an organization that sold them. Now, GiftsToGive has its own thrift shop, which is open on Saturdays.

Among the programs offered are middle school mentoring. There is also an early literacy, community-based reading program in pre-school, kindergarten and first grade, fueled by PTO parents and GiftsToGive volunteers.

Under Project Cinderella, gently worn formal dresses and accessories are provided to middle and high school girls to help celebrate their prom or other occasions.

Stevens described our nation as having “huge amounts of child poverty and huge amounts of wealth.” As for how GiftsToGive plays a role, “Child poverty is our issue. “ Stevens said 24 million children live in poverty in the U.S., with another 24 million being “the working poor.”

As for why people like him and the many volunteers have to help tackle such a big problem in America, he said,“All the problems, the government’s not going to fix them.” Stevens said it’s up to “the community to fix them.”

Stevens, who lives in Boston, said he looked at Gateway cities when he decided to “build a nonprofit based on business principles.”

He first planned to open a place in Lawrence where he signed a lease only to have the Environmental Protection Agency close the building. New Bedford was second on his list.

As the brochure states, the business model “is low cost, high impact and has become almost self sustaining. In essence, we’re building a more caring community by repositioning philanthropy and redefining citizenship.”

It states, “Our primary mission is to give young people, both the privileged and those in need, a very real opportunity to practice ‘Big Citizenship’ and ‘Tangible Philanthropy.’ From their gifts of time and treasure, children come to understand, through their doing, the power of giving and service and that we all have gifts to give.”

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